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Philips, ARM Collaborate On Asynchronous CPU

Posted by timothy on from the it's-always-either-late-or-early dept.

Sean D. Solle writes "While not an actual off-the-shelf chip, Philips and ARM have announced a clockless ARM core using what they call "Handshake Technology." Read on for more about just what that means; according to this article, the asynchronous ARM chip has yet to be developed, but the same Philips subsidiary has applied similar technology to other microprocessors.

Sean D. Solle continues "Back in the early 1990's there was a lot of excitement (well, Acorn users got excited) about Prof. Steve Furber's asynchronous ARM research project, "Amulet". The idea is to let the CPU's component blocks run at their own rate, synchronising with each other only when needed. Like a normal RISC processor, one instruction typically takes one clock cycle; but in a clockless ARM, a cycle can take less time for different classes of instructions.

For example, a MOV instruction could finish before (and hence consume less power than) an ADD, even though they both execute in a single cycle. As well as energy-efficiency, running at effectively random frequencies reduces a chip's RFI emissions - handy if it's living in a cellphone or other wireless device."

6 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Intel were first... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    The device never makes it out of the lab.

    Duh everybody know Intel is all about the clockspeed. How can they sell a clockless cpu?? How could they claim their processor was better than AMD's without some silly numbers to use?

  2. Re:Quite impressive... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    For all you non-ee's out there, a chip is full of little memory cells called flip-flops.

    Hey, go Philips! Go ARM! I'd love to get John Kerry removed from my chips...

  3. ENIAC was first by chris_sawtell · · Score: 4, Funny

    I hope they don't try to patent this.
    Refer to 1944 for prior art.

  4. Re:Intel WAS first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ummm considering that British English is the Original English, I think those speakers can make that "mistake" as many fucking times as they want. Now STFU and go choke on a freedom fry, you (obviously) American prick.

  5. no way - by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ARM? Handshaking? They're having a laugh...

  6. NO NO NO!!! by kompiluj · · Score: 2, Funny

    Give me back my gigahertz!!!
    I want all my precioussss... gigahertz!!!

    --
    You can defy gravity... for a short time